


Redemption

by JazzEagle



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:54:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29788128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzEagle/pseuds/JazzEagle
Summary: What happens when the ghosts of the past come back to haunt us? And what do we do when they bring with them new demons and deadly dangers that we never expected?These are questions Bobby Drake must answer, when over a year after Alcatraz, he gets a surprise visit from someone he never thought he'd see again. And as a result is drawn back into a world of danger and strife for himself and those he cares about.
Relationships: John Allerdyce/Bobby Drake
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into the world of fanfiction writing. I've been a fan of this pairing for so long and must have read almost every fic there is and am constantly wanting more. Eventually I just decided to give in and make some more content myself.   
> This will be a multi-chaptered story, unbetaed, and a mix of movieverse cannon, stuff I've picked up reading around the comic cannon and details I made up myself to tell the story I wanted to.   
> I'm mostly posting this first chapter to guage if there is any interest in continuing to post and updates may be scattered as I am living that busy student life.  
> Hope you like it!

Bobby remembers a night, long ago, before Logan and Rogue had even come to the mansion, before everything that happened after, back when the biggest problem they had to worry about was the next test or the freezer running out of ice cream.

John had only been at the mansion a few months, arriving with no more than the clothes on his back, the lighter in his hands and a wary combative look in his eye. Almost immediately they were roomed together, Bobby’s ice powers and gentle, patient demeanour the perfect match to John’s fire and short-fused temper. It took persistent, hard work, trying, even on someone with Bobby’s patience, to wear down some of the walls John kept around himself, until they were something like friends.

He remembers a time distinctly, when he woke to a strange choking sound and turned to see John in the dim light of their room with tear tracks down his face, a fist pressed to his mouth to muffle the pained, mournful noises that tried to spill forth.

Pushing aside his blankets, he carefully made his way to the other bed, “John?”

“Oh fuck,” John exclaimed and twisted to face away, “Go back to bed Bobby, I’m fine.”

Instead, he sat down, placing a hand gently against the tense shape of John’s shoulders. Almost as soon as he made contact, his hand was displaced by the rapid movement of John throwing himself at Bobby, wrapping his arms tight around his back and pressing his head into his stomach and exhaling shakily. It was accompanied by the muffled muttering of what sounded like ‘fuck, fuck, fuck,’ and the unmistakable dampness from tears soaking through the thin fabric of his shirt.

Bobby remembers being stunned for a moment, both at the unexpected and uncharacteristic show of emotion from his notoriously closed-off roommate but also at the level of trust being given to Bobby in allowing him to witness it. Most times, if he had caught John in a mood, he would have told Bobby to fuck off, and left to deal with it alone, never allowing anyone to see him in anything resembling a vulnerable state. Bobby remembers holding him back, one hand on his shoulder, pretending not to feel it shake, the other gently placed to the back of John’s head. His brown hair soft to the touch, free from the gel he used to slick it back during the day. Eventually the tears stopped, and John shoved him away roughly telling him to go back to sleep and stop being such a girl and Bobby knew that John was okay again.

They never talked about it after but from that day, Bobby became aware of just how much John did to show he trusted him. From letting Bobby help him with his math homework while he fixed Bobby’s English, to letting him see the embarrassing gothic romance novels he used to read and hide under his bed, to letting him hold his lighter. The source of his power. The lighter that if anyone else even looked at for too long might end up with their hair on fire or their prized belongings torched. Anyone but Bobby. He never understood then, the depth of what that meant, the trust he was being given. He knew it was important, sure, it would be hard to miss that fact, but over time and with the burden of hindsight he thought that perhaps it was more than important, that it was vital maybe. An integral piece of the puzzle that made Johnny who he was and defined their friendship. He would come to wonder, often and hopelessly, that maybe if he’d realised what he was being given then maybe he would have noticed when it all started to change. Maybe he would have seen the signs, maybe he could have talked to him, maybe he could have stopped him from leaving.

The What If’s drive him crazy. What if he had noticed John pulling away earlier? What if he had been less singly focussed on Rogue to the exclusion of all else? What if he had asked him to wait before running out blind into the snow? What if he had tried to find him after he left? What if he asked him to come home outside the clinic? What if he tried, rather than giving up on him as traitor the second he left, to help him?

What if he hadn’t killed his best friend?

* * *

The list of the dead was published a week after the battle. After the authorities had combed over the ruins of Alcatraz Island and gone through the survivors.

Bobby didn’t read it for three days.

When he finally mustered up the courage, he was in the gardens. Sitting on a bench, alone with the sun warming his face and the sounds of birds chirping in the trees. The paper was heavy in his hands, weighed down by the burden of the numerous lost souls contained within. So many were lost that day. Humans and mutants alike. Most he never knew, the names as unrecognisable to him as life before the school, but there is one that jumps out at him. Four letters. A name he knows almost as well as he knows his own. The one name he hoped he wouldn’t see.

_Pyro_

It sits blankly, unassuming on the page, nestled between the names of strangers. Clear and sharp and then blurry all at once as his eyes fill with traitorous tears that he won’t let fall. He refuses to cry for the hateful, angry Pyro who tried to kill him and almost succeeded, but inside he weeps for John, his best friend – the troubled teenager who had been hurt and abandoned one too many times by people he cared about that he finally decided enough was enough and left before it could happen again. The boy with fire running through his veins and a wicked grin.

He grieves for John, and he grieves for himself, for the innocence lost the second he saw Pyro’s name because it was his fault it was there in the first place. Bobby is the one who knocked him out and ultimately left him for dead as the Phoenix went supernova. In the panic, he didn’t even think about Pyro, lying prone in the middle of the battlefield, just ran for the bridge with Kitty and the others. His best friend’s fate didn’t even cross his mind until the next day when it hit him like a train. Storm mentioned in passing that the authorities were compiling a list of survivors and more importantly, a list of who never made it out.

Since then, the mansion has been full of ghosts. Everywhere he goes he sees them, Jean, Scott, the Professor and John. He sees John the most. Whether it’s because he feels directly responsible for his death or because, for years, they spent most of their time together, but his presence is everywhere. He can hardly sleep in his room anymore. The empty bed beside his and the lingering scent of smoke a painful reminder of its previous occupant. Most nights will find him in the kitchen, ice cream in hand, reliving the Stryker’s invasion, the night everything changed.

“Bobby?”

A voice calls to him gently, breaking him from his reverie. It’s Kitty. Her dark hair is loose around her face and her hands are wringing together as she looks down it him with a concerned expression. He doesn’t respond. He can’t. Suddenly his throat feels tight and he fears if he tries to say something, he will start bawling instead. Something in his expression must convey this as she doesn’t ask again. Instead, she quickly moves closer, sits next to him, and lightly places a hand on his arm. It stays there for a long moment, a comforting weight and warmth, grounding him in the here and now. Eventually though it moves, down his forearm and to the paper crinkling in his hands. She takes it from him and suddenly bereft of the heavy page, Bobby holds his hands together to hide the fact that they are shaking.

She doesn’t say anything for a long while. He hears her open the page, the sharp exhale a few seconds later. “It’s not your fault you know?” Her voice is measured, soothing. “John he... he made his choices. He would have killed you. So, I’m not sorry you won, but for what it’s worth I’m sorry you lost him. I know he was your friend.” She gives him back the list and stands up, pressing a hand to his hunched shoulder. “If you want to talk about it, I’m always here.”

“Thanks Kit.” He replies, surprised and moved by the offer. The others have never hidden their less than stellar opinions of John. Their belief that his defection was inevitable, that he was just as bad as Magneto and always had been. So, for Kitty to express any amount of sorrow over his fate is unexpected, even more so is the genuine emotion in her eyes and in her voice.

She squeezes his shoulder lightly before turning and making her way back into the mansion. Bobby stays there for he doesn’t know how long. Mind turning and twisting over the events of the last few months and what happens next. The Professor is gone, Jean is gone, Scott is gone. Logan will be gone soon too he thinks; that restless animal within him bubbling to the surface and making him look at the doors and windows with that incessant longing to get out, get away. It’s a look he’s uncomfortable familiar with, one he saw in John’s eyes far too often, but never understood what it meant before it was too late.

John was gone a long time ago. But there was always the chance, however slim, that he might come back. Until now. Now he can never come home, even if he wanted to, which, if Bobby is brutally honest with himself, something he desperately tries not to be, was incredibly unlikely in the first place.

Storm is struggling. Taking over the Professors role would have been hard at the best of times and this is hardly that. Down three teachers and with an influx of new students, the older students have had to take on a great deal more responsibility: Bobby, Kitty, Rogue, Colossus, they’re more like teachers now, doing all they can to help. But Bobby wonders how long it will be until they’re gone too. Back to their families or to start a new life somewhere else or just far away from all the bad memories and ghosts that haunt the mansion halls.

He has a sinking, sickly feeling that that time is coming for him, and sooner than he'd like.


	2. Chapter 2

_~One year later_

It’s late when he gets back to his dorm. The sun has already set. and he can hear parties springing up as he walks through the halls. He meant to come back much earlier to avoid this very thing but when he sat in the library, he realised he was much less prepared than he thought for his upcoming exam and promptly lost himself in his study. As a result, he is forced to hurry to his door, head down and quiet, lest one of his neighbours notice him and try to get him involved in what was already proving to be a large and noisy party next door. Most days Bobby wouldn’t mind, would in fact be eager to join in the festivities but with the stress of his recent workload and the rapidly increasing pain between his eyes, tonight he really just wants to get inside and lie down.

Luckily, he makes it to his room without being accosted, hears his roommates loud braying laugh coming from the next room over and is hit with a surge of relief. He didn’t realise quite how much he wanted the room to himself until that exact moment. The sounds of partying are still audible through the thin walls, so he turns on the tv, uncaring of the channel, as a way to drown them out. The muffled chatter from the other room and the voices from the television mixing to form a droning white noise in the background.

The backpack is dropped heavily by the foot of his bed, shoes kicked off and a spoon picked from the drawer. He decides to forgo the bowl, sits cross legged against the headboard and gets out the tub he picked up on his way back from the library. Ice cream for dinner isn’t the most nutritious of options – Jean probably would have lectured him about the issues with eating sugar so late or something – but he’s tired and his head hurts so he thinks he deserves it.

The TV is on a news channel, recaps of the major stories of the day. Most of it is nothing of note so they keep circling back to a story about a building explosion in San Francisco earlier that evening. It seems the initial reaction and theories have been made and seen so now it’s just a tired looking newscaster summarising what happened in front of a montage of burning building, black plumes of thick smoke, firefighters working to put it out and the blackened, ashy remains after. Fires in themselves aren’t that unusual, the newscaster is speculating that the cause was a faulty gas line and that’s normal too; but the building was apparently a privately owned genetics laboratory and that concerns him. Bobby knows immediately that there will be a fallout for this. Ever since the cure was introduced, anything remotely bad that happens related to somewhere or someone involved in genetics, or DNA, or anything of similar gets tied to mutants, whether justifiably or not. So there goes his plan for a relaxed and peaceful weekend. No doubt he will be getting a call from the mansion to ‘check in,’ and the clinic will most likely feel an uptick in visitors, so he’ll go over to lend a hand.

The clinic is a semi-recent endeavour. A volunteer run and founded shelter where depowered mutants go to get some extra help. At least that’s how it started. Over time it has evolved; it became a place to help people recover when their powers started coming back around three or four months back and soon enough it became a community meeting spot. A place for mutants to go when they needed help, or a place to sleep or just somewhere to find a friendly face. Bobby started volunteering there on his weekends and the odd free evening if there was some new mutant scandal on the news. It’s a small place and it often needs all the help it can get. While it is an independent business, the work it does is similar to the teachings of the X-Men and it offered a sense of familiarity and comfort when he first moved out of the institute. A familiarity that increased exponentially when some of the other graduates from Xavier’s started helping out there occasionally. Kitty and Piotr, even Marie sometimes.

Most often though it’s Jubilee. She moved into the city before Bobby, almost as soon as they graduated. Unlike Bobby and the others who spent their summer together at the mansion. But Jubilee had always been more restless than them, she was like John in that regard, it’s probably why they got on so well. Bobby wouldn’t say that they were close at school, somewhere above acquaintances but below friends. Jubilee was John’s friend, Bobby was John’s best friend, and so by extension they hung out sometimes. When John left, that tie was cut and there was no real reason for them to interact anymore, besides shared history. Jubilee grew distant, and when she moved out of the mansion, she didn’t make any attempt to contact them.

It wasn’t until Bobby started volunteering at the clinic and ran into her, quite by accident, that he even knew that she was still in New York. Since then, they’ve become what Bobby would consider actual friends. Although Jubilee is more closed off than him, so he’s not always sure what her opinions of him truly are, but she usually seems happy to see him and easily chats the time away.

“Heya Frosty,” she greets him the next morning, eagerly taking the box of doughnuts he got up early to purchase off his hands and rifling through to pick out the best one, before putting them on the table for everyone else to peruse through, “shoulda known you’d be by, you saw the news last night I take it?”

“Yeah, thought you guys might need an extra hand or two. And I didn’t have anything better to do anyway.”

She looks sideways at him, eyebrow raised and disbelief clear on her face. In all fairness to Jubilee, she has an astounding bullshit detector, but with the frankly pitiful attempt on his part to keep the exhaustion from his voice and overly chipper attitude to make up for it, a blind man could have seen he was full of it. She doesn’t call him on it. Instead, giving him an obvious look up and down, lingering on the bags under his eyes, before shrugging and turning her back to him and moving to fill up a cup of coffee, “That explosion was crazy huh? I hear it took hours for them to put the fires out completely. John would have loved it.”

Bobby suddenly has a powerfully strong urge to knock the boiling coffee over her bright yellow jacket. He likes Jubilee, genuinely, but sometimes he resents her and never more than when she brings up John so casually in conversation. As if he was still their friend. As if he was still alive. Sometimes he wonders if she does it on purpose. If she knows how uncomfortable, how uneasy it makes him – she must, Bobby has never been particularly subtle about his emotions, even when he tries to be. If she is doing it to punish him, to remind him every time, ‘hey, remember that friend we had? The one you killed. because I do, and I won’t let you forget either.’ He wouldn’t put it past her.

It hurts.

A sharp and unrelenting pain that simmers just beneath the skin - constantly, even now, close to a year after the battle - brought to the surface with every mention of his name, every reminder of his old friend. For Jubilee to mention him so soon after a massive fire graced the news is no coincidence. He could stop talking to her, stop coming by the clinic so often, they’ve got plenty of volunteers, they don’t need him. But as much as it hurts, it’s comforting too. Jubilee is sometimes so much like John that it can be hard to stomach her presence, but equally it provides a strange reassurance. Familiarity amongst the wholly unfamiliar scene of college. There is an unspoken commiseration between them over the loss of Pyro. An understanding that Bobby has yet to find with anyone else. They tried, Marie tried, Kitty tried, but they just couldn’t comprehend the tumultuous mix of feelings that Pyro’s death inspired in him. Jubilee has come the closest.

“Earth to Bobby, hey!” Bobby is startled out of the depressing thought spiral by Jubilee waving her hand in his face, “If you’re here you may as well help, rather than stand there like a sad snowman, come on,” and promptly guided to start unpacking and setting up the chairs.

* * *

He is one arm into his coat and one foot out the door of the clinic when his evening plans to brood alone in his room are rapidly disbanded by a whirlwind of pink, yellow and black.

“Oh no you don’t!” She snaps sharply, gripping his arm with a strength he didn’t know she possessed and dragging him in the opposite direction of home.

Before he knows what has happened, Bobby finds himself in a dimly lit bar, some bright fruity drink he doesn’t know the name of in front of him, laughing at Jubilee dancing, badly, but with enthusiasm, on the table in front of him, fireworks sparking up and down her arms. The bar is apparently a mutant friendly place; he’s never been before, but Jubilee seems to be a regular which must be why the doorman was willing to look past their obviously underage nature and let them in with a flash of their powers. It’s been a surprisingly fun evening and one he likely wouldn’t have agreed to if he had been given a choice. Reluctantly he will admit that it might have been exactly what he needed – a night of unbridled fun and a distraction from all the unsavoury things floating around his head. Jubilee even managed to drag him onto the dancefloor for awhile but soon it got too hot and crowded for his liking, so he catches Jubilee’s eye and gestures to the smoking area door to let her know where he is going. He gets a short nod of acknowledgment and makes his escape.

The chill air outside is a sharp contrast to the stuffy atmosphere of the club and he takes a deep breath. Crisp, cool with an unmistakeable undercurrent of smoke and alcohol. Bobby leans against a wall, the brick hard against his back and takes stock of the small outside area. There are a few wooden tables and a brick wall that separated it from the main street. He can hear the cars going by outside and the muffled bass coming from inside. It’s pretty empty, only a few others out here with him – a group of girls crowded around one table and a group of guys around another, a few stragglers on their own or in pairs standing and filling the rest of the area.

A metallic snap draws his attention to the right where a guy stands a few feet away lighting a cigarette with a red zippo. He has red hair and is wearing a tight grey shirt with blue jeans. He looks nothing like John, but Bobby is once again hit with a violent and unwelcome reminder none the less. He thinks he must be cursed. It can’t be normal to be so persistently haunted by the spectre of someone so long dead, and even longer lost.

And yet.

The cold air is suffocating all of a sudden. The smoke chokes him and the cold slices at his throat and heart. He has to leave.

The bar is dark and loud and covers his exit easily, he spots Jubilee’s yellow form on the far side and she doesn’t seem to see him as he leaves through the main door.

There is an alley at the side of the bar that he ducks into for cover. The air here smells faintly of garbage but not of smoke. Pulling out his phone Bobby goes to call a cab to take him home when he remembers he doesn’t even know the address of this place to tell the driver. The screen is blurry as he pauses scrolling through his contacts. He’s not sure what prompts him to do it, but he ends up calling John. His old number, from when he was at the school. The one he never tried to ring after he left at Alkali lake – too angry and betrayed to bother. He doesn’t expect it to go through and when it does, he is shocked into silence for a moment after the robot voice tells him, ‘You have reached the voicemail box for ‘ _John Allerdyce_ ,’ please leave your message after the beep.’

Hearing his voice again after so long makes him sob. It’s so stupid, it’s just him saying his name, distracted and mildly pissed off, but with-it Bobby feels something break again, deep inside him. He remembers John recording the message, was there with him. John kept saying it was pointless and ‘why should he’ and ‘who was gonna call him anyway,’ but he gave in after Bobby kept pestering him.

“Guess you were wrong after all Johnny, someone did finally call you,” he scoffs to himself, “too little, too late huh?” He scrubs at his eyes roughly to clear them and took a shaky breath. He should just hang up. There’s no one on the other end. No one will ever get this message. There’s both too much and not enough to say. He doesn’t know why he’s doing this to himself. Closure maybe?

He wants to tell John that he doesn’t blame him for leaving, that he’s sorry he never looked for him after, that he never asked him to come home, that he’s sorry. “Why did you do it?!” He asks instead, angry, and frustrated. He’s not sure what he’s asking, ‘why did you leave?’ ‘why did you join him?’ ‘why did you try to kill me?’ ‘why did you die?’ All of it.

“I hate you. I hate you so much.” And he does. He hates John, for leaving. Hates Pyro for replacing John. Hates himself.

The tears are coming heavily now. He can barely see through them. And he can’t hold back the audible sobs.

“Do you hear me Johnny? I hate you. I do. I really…” He cuts himself off with a jagged breath. Slides down the wall until he is sitting, head in his knees and phone pressed tightly to his ear, “I miss you.”

The high-pitched beep stops him from saying anymore. _Are you satisfied with your message?_ It asks indifferently. He sends it. It doesn’t matter. Maybe after this he will finally be able to move on.

He’s so drained that the hand on his neck doesn’t even startle him.

“I miss him too.”

Jubilee isn’t crying. She doesn’t have tears in her eyes. But they are filled with sadness regardless, and a not insignificant portion of pity that Bobby pretends not to see.

“If I’d known you were gonna be a sad drunk I would have let you be,” Bobby manages a wry smile at the attempt at humour and lets her drag him to his feet, “Come on Frosty, let’s get you home.”

* * *

He’s not at home when he wakes up. The apartment is both nicer and much more brightly decorated than his shared college dorm. His head is pounding, and it takes him a long while to pull the disparate pieces of himself back together until he feels like a person again. She forces a piece of dry toast on him and a glass of water. They don’t talk about the night before.

Bobby goes home in the early afternoon, gets some minimal studying done, makes dinner, goes to bed, and doesn’t think about John. It’s a relief and he is finally able to believe that moving on might be possible.

It goes like that for the next four months. He gets up, goes about his day, and doesn’t think about John. Life goes back to relative normal.

Until one day, he comes home to a slouched figure leaning over his desk. He can’t see their face but there is something undeniably familiar about their stance, the way they hold themselves – weight on one long, hip cocked out, one arm crossed across their chest, the other up by their face. A glint of silver in their hands.

A hard glint in his brown eyes and smirk on his lips, “Hey Bobby, long time no see.”


End file.
